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News Article: 11 Hanford workers to sue, allege a cover-up
11 Hanford workers to sue, allege a cover-up
Plaintiffs say '97 blast caused severe injuries
Friday, March 31, 2000
By ANGELA GALLOWAY
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
CAPITOL CORRESPONDENT
Eleven workers who claim they received botched medical help after an explosion at a Hanford plutonium plant nearly three years ago plan to file a lawsuit today.
The current and former workers allege they suffered severe, disabling injuries in a May 1997 tank explosion and the subsequent mishandled emergency response.
They seek medical treatment and unspecified financial compensation, said Hugh Plunkett, a Minneapolis lawyer representing the workers.
Above all, the workers want answers about the explosion at the nuclear reservation near the Tri-Cities, said plaintiff Ron Irvin, a 46-year-old electrical worker.
"Come out with the truth about what really happened that night," Irvin said yesterday.
Eight electrical workers were taking a break behind the Hanford Plutonium Finishing Plant when they noticed an explosion in a fourth-floor mixing room. They were directed to take cover in the plant, but to do so they had to walk through a plume of brown smoke that smelled of metal and chlorine.
Hanford officials said no radioactivity was released, but managers were found to have failed to properly test the workers for exposure to chemicals and did not have adequate testing equipment on hand. The men had to drive themselves to hospitals for checkups. Three other Hanford workers have joined in the lawsuit.
Plunkett said contractors for the Department of Energy have given Irvin and other workers inadequate information and assistance in dealing with subsequent medical problems, such as blood abnormalities, numbness, migraines, inability to urinate, sexual dysfunction and memory loss.
Each of the workers has had health problems since the explosion, and some can no longer work, he said.
"One man can't even hold a hammer," said Plunkett, who added that the workers want medical monitoring. "They want to know when (their health) turns a corner because they live in constant fear of cancer."
Plunkett said Fluor Hanford, one of the site's top contractors, will be a primary defendant in the suit to be filed in U.S. District Court in Spokane. Several subcontractors that advised Fluor also will be named.
Two governmental agencies hit Fluor with hefty fines following the explosion, which blew a hole in the defunct plant's roof, which was supposed to help prevent release of nuclear material.
Keith Karpe, a Fluor spokesman, declined comment until the lawsuit is filed.
Plunkett contends that Fluor and others lied to the workers and staged a cover-up.
Soon after the incident, the workers were told tests showed they were not exposed to toxic levels of chemicals or radiation "until (Hanford management) finally admitted there hadn't been any testing."
Most of the workers weren't tested until last year, when the government paid for tests at the University of Texas, Plunkett said.
Those examinations indicate the workers were exposed to radioactive or similar contamination, but the workers still lack a clear picture of what they were exposed to when supervisors led them through a brown plume after the eruption, Plunkett said.
Worse yet, the lawyer said, workers who pushed for answers were threatened and harassed.
Plunkett said homes and cars of several workers who asked questions about the incident were broken into. Nothing of value was ever taken, but some personal records were stolen.
One worker discovered two dead, plucked crows in his lawn -- their heads buried in the ground, he said.
The workers "were abused. They were exposed. And they have been left out in the wind," said Gerry Pollet, executive director of Heart of America Northwest, a Hanford watchdog group. "There was just a plain, old-fashioned cover-up."
Several months after the explosion, the state Department of Ecology fined the federal Department of Energy $110,000 -- the largest fine ever related to Hanford.
"The Department of Energy had not adequately identified the risk posed by the chemicals and did not manage them right, which led to the explosion," said Steve Moore, a state Ecology compliance inspector. "We found deficiencies overall in the emergency response system.
Then in March 1998, the Energy Department levied its own fine, one of the largest in the history of its nuclear safety program: $140,625 against Fluor for its handling of plutonium.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Hardeman, Manager
Environmental Radiation Program
Environmental Protection Division
Georgia Department of Natural Resources
4244 International Parkway, Suite 114
Atlanta, GA 30354
(404) 362-2675 fax: (404) 362-2653
Jim_Hardeman@mail.dnr.state.ga.us
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